Vision Weekend

My late husband, Jason, and I found out about Vision Weekend from reading the My Father's World catalog. We had been looking for something to get away and do as a couple, and the idea of coming to hear about how God has used the founders of My Father's World and discover the vision that God has for our families is what drew us to the event.

Because one of the speakers, Luke Everett, from the Deaf School in Mexico was bringing his wife to this event (she's only attended twice), My Father's World offered us the opportunity to come early and attend the Art of Marriage seminar. The seminar was mainly run off DVDs and the videos were followed by discussion time. The small staff available for the marriage seminar was having trouble with the technology, so, my husband and I stepped in to help and from there, we started a relationship which led to us running the Vision Weekend Events.

I've been involved with Vision Weekend twice a year since we first attended in the fall of 2013. In all of those years, only one Vision Weekend has been canceled. Over the years, our roles changed from running technology, to editing PowerPoint slides, to creating presentations, to even presenting.

In terms of the logistics of preparing for a Vision Weekend, I send emails inviting those who are interested to attend our next event and to those who have registered. I used to have to wait until I received an email stating someone had purchased tickets to the event before I could send a personalized email to each person, giving them dates, times, and information they needed to know to prepare. In that email, I would also request them to provide names of attendees, any dietary restrictions, etc. This was all done manually, and with a few couples, I have had to playfully threaten not to provide directions to the venue if the necessary information wasn't provided.

Our ERP system, VAI Smart Center, is wonderful for handling our physical product sales but not for event sales. The system had to be tricked for years, to act like we sent out a physical product, so things would progress through the system correctly. We even had a couple show up to one event that we didn't know had registered. Their registration had gotten stuck in the system and they came on faith without details other than when and approximately where to show up. We added some manual checks in the system after that to catch the registrations that got held up in the system until we began using Brushfire for events. The new software works so much more smoothly and quickly and we've had no more surprise attendees.

When someone registers on Brushfire, I have it set up to automatically ask the name and dietary restrictions and this information is mandatory before registration is complete. Also, it automatically sends out a registration email providing initial information and requests for some additional information from the attendees that will be used to tailor the event to each specific group. Brushfire keeps track of each registrant and can be set up to automatically send a report of who has registered to our Vision Weekend staff. I'm also able to send group emails from this platform, so, for those who need a reminder about sending in the requested information, I can choose to send them all an email at the same time, but Brushfire sends individual emails to everyone in that group. I can also send out the final email with driving instructions and last-minute details from that platform. Brushfire's reports are available as downloadable csv files; I can download and open them in Excel. This allows me to auto mail merge the information into name tags, and other needed content. Overall, Brushfire has been a wonderful addition to the tools we use to run Vision Weekend.

May 2025 was the first Vision Weekend I haven't attended since October 2013. I was able to prepare everything in advance, and set up the main meeting room ahead of time so that I could attend an event for my middle daughter, Evelyn. It was bittersweet to prepare everything and not attend the event. Everything has a season, and with all of the work that has been done over the years, God allowed me to step away from some of my involvement. I'm not sure how permanent this is, however, I am very grateful for the time that I could spend with my late husband, driving from Kentucky twice a year to run these events. The time spent traveling to and from each of the Vision weekends, plus the time at the events are now treasured memories.

I'll share a little bit about my own personal experiences with Vision Weekends over the years in another post. For now, if you are interested, please see more information about Vision Weekend.